


Scenes from the Post-post Apocalypse

by A_Big_Old_Skeleton



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Female EXO, Gen, Variks is my beautiful dumpster-diving child, Warlock - Freeform, the fallen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2018-12-30 03:38:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12099879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Big_Old_Skeleton/pseuds/A_Big_Old_Skeleton
Summary: An Exo who's been doing this immortality thing for a while, and some of what she's done. Vaguely connected vignettes. When characters show up, I'll tag 'em.





	1. Introduction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feeling our age.

“Do you know how old I am? I am almost impossibly old. It has been centuries since the last time I was asked how old I was, and even then I was impossibly old. I could tell you precisely how impossibly old I was, but I think,” pausing to give the impression of a smile, “I think I would rather leave it at ‘impossibly old.’”

“The real bitch of it is, and I’m telling you this because you might understand, although it’s just as likely that you will not, but the real  _ fucker _ of it is that I can tell you down to the nanosecond how old I am, and I can tell you the last time I received a query regarding my age, but I could not for the life of me tell you anything that happened before, oh, about two years ago. Because up until two years ago, I was a corpse on a highway, a deactivated husk rusting to bits. Everything before that is a blank. I know I existed before then, and presumably did something that led up to my dying on a highway, but until this little bastard,” indicating her Ghost, floating innocently nearby, “woke me up, I’ve got nothing. I don’t know what sort of a person I was, apart from one who had a more than passing familiarity with firearms.”


	2. Exhaustion is New

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Run through the Underdark. Try not to die.

She is exhausted. It is a new feeling for her, one she is surprised to learn is a feeling she can experience. Had her creators (whoever they were) expected her to become more human, with time? Is this merely part of being an advanced piece of artificial intelligence? Her batteries, such as they are, do not “run low” in the way that a human becomes tired. Indeed, knowledge inherent to her programming helpfully informs her she is a long, long way from running on reserve power. Solar cells are woven into her skin, her ship fuels her energies when the sun is out of sight, and if nothing else, she doubts very much her Ghost would allow her to run out of power.

 

Yet she is exhausted. Her limbs almost seem to resist moving, and it has been so, so long since she saw the sky. The tunnels go on forever, it seems, and the gloom of them weighs on her in a way that should be impossible. She is a machine--albeit one that thinks for itself, that experiences emotions--and machines do not get tired, do not know what it is to be sick of the almost constant sounds of rustling carapaces and the distant sounds of inhuman screeching. Are not afraid they will never see their home again, even though a machine should not have any opinions about “home” to begin with.


	3. A Lengthy Nap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just tell me what time it is, would you?

A flash of light in a former war zone was followed by an electronic sigh.

“How long this time?”

“We should get moving. I’m picking up movement to our southeast.”

“How long?”

“I have told you before that focusing on this information is detrimental to your mental health, you know.”

“Duly noted. How long this time?”

It was a mistake to suggest that something without a face could be expressive. Indeed, the shifting of a corner, or the brightening or dimming of the cyclopean eye was more than sufficient to convey a certain hesitation along with… embarrassment?

Another electronic sigh. “Can you at least tell me what happened this time?”

“Sniper fire. You were tied up with another combatant. Clean shot to the back of the head as soon as your shielding dropped. You never saw it coming.” An awkward pause. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“The mission?”

“Failure. It was already a rout when we were sent in. You were meant to hold the line long enough for a measured retreat, but…”

“No such luck.” Her internal chronometer sent her an error message to let her know it failed to connect to the planetary network and could not update its date and time settings. She sighed. The source of the problem floated next to her. “You know I’ll find out how long eventually, right? Just rip that bandage off and we can get to our next losing battle.” She stood and stretched, a completely useless gesture in a mechanical body, but a tic that she’d developed working with humans - or had it been programmed into her? It didn’t matter.

“You have just undergone reconstitution. I am attempting to mitigate stress after a traumatic event.”

“Who said anything about traumatic events? How many times have you had to bring me back, Ghost?” The last word was almost spit from her mouth, except she had no salivary glands and could not actually spit. “It is a bit late to worry about  _ trauma _ .”

“Two years, three months, eight days.”

“Two  _ years _ ?”

“Three months, eight days, yes.”

There was a long pause, then. Her motion sensors pinged a warning, and her ghost fidgeted nervously. “Quite a rout.”

“I was… separated from you. After you went down. There was a pulse that scrambled my systems. A patrol found me and brought me back online.”

“I didn’t think you could come back.” That was, after all, the fear every Guardian carried. There were enough dead ghosts out there - and once a ghost was gone, there was no recovering the Guardian. The light would fade, and that was it for you - off to whatever afterlife existed. She, at least, had never experienced an afterlife - whether that was the cost of being mechanical or the cost of whatever the Traveler had done to her, she had no way of being certain. 

“It is a rare occurrence, but not unheard of. I believe there is a certain quantity of luck involved.”

“Oh? This wasn’t the ‘will of the Traveler’ I’ve heard so much about?” She smirked ( _ her _ face had been designed for expressions) as she began checking over her equipment. “I thought you lot were all extensions of his holy farts.”

“This might surprise you but Ghosts are not the ones who created a religion around our creator. That was solely your civilization. I was created to serve in the ongoing conflict, but I do not consider myself a holy messenger.”

This earned a mildly pleased grunt from its charge. “Must be a side-effect of being an artificial intelligence.”

“What is?”

“Not being particularly religious.” She made a fist, then, and was rewarded with a sparking of arc energy. “I don’t suppose my ship is still in orbit?”

“It is not, but that is merely because it is en route. Five minutes to arrival.”

“What a pleasant surprise.” 

“I have an unpleasant surprise too. That movement I’ve been tracking is two minutes from our position. You’ll probably have to fight.”

She hefted her rifle, pleased to see it had been rebuilt along with the rest of her. “Hmm. Well, try not to leave me dead for two years next time if this goes wrong.”

“I will do my best. Try not to die this time.”


	4. Facts Forgotten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not everyone gets to come back.

Sometimes she forgets that people can actually die and not come back. She knows people died once, of course - she has walked through the wreckage of the Golden Age as much as anyone else, after all - but she’s become so used to dying and coming back that she forgets permanent death is still a going concern for beings that aren’t Fallen or Cabal (the Hive and the Vex seem to regard death as a minor inconvenience). She could be forgiven, therefore, for her initial puzzlement at the scene confronting her. 

A young woman lay sprawled on the ground, pinned under the body of a Fallen. It was immediately obvious the two had fought, and when she shifted the corpse off to get a better look, it was also obvious that both had lost - the Fallen had merely had the advantage of losing more quickly. The woman took a shuddering breath and looked up at the Exo standing over her before a series of wet coughs broke the spell. She took a knee and prodded experimentally at the wounds while her Ghost floated over her shoulder and made helpless-sounding noises. The Traveler’s light was only good for Guardians - keyed to the specific blueprint of its charges.

“I’m sorry,” her Ghost informs her via a transmission. “I can call for help, but I don’t know if anyone will get her in time.”

She nods in acknowledgement and turns back to her charge. “Hang in there, help’s on the way. Just focus on me, okay?”

The young woman’s expression is confused, at first, and then slips into a realization that whatever Ghosts do for Guardians they can’t do for normal humans, and it’s like she knows that help won’t make it in time, knows (or at least suspects) just how far out from civilization is, certainly understands her situation better than some dumb fucking robot. There’s more coughing, followed by a rattling exhale. The dumb fucking robot in question makes comforting noises, some ancient subroutine (or memory of being human? She can never tell) kicking in, and does her best to make the expiring child comfortable. She queries her Ghost again, asks how long until someone who can do something arrives, gets an answer with decidedly negative overtones. She puts on a brave face, reassures her charge that it’ll be okay and gets a grimace and roll of the eyes in response. The girl moves then, agonizingly, and pulls a small charm out of her pocket with a name engraved on it. Her mouth makes the shape “please,” but no words come out - just more coughing. 

It takes another ten minutes for her to die. She holds her hand at the end, tells her she fought well, swears she’ll bring the amulet to its recipient, asks for a location, gets nothing more than “City” in response. Five minutes later, the cavalry arrives, and she stands up with a jerk, waves off the medic, asks her Ghost to figure out who the girl was. There are records - scattered, incomplete, somewhat reliant on being born in the City and not outside its walls - which might at least give some clue, and she spends more time than she should scrolling through entry after entry. Her Ghost dutifully informs her of incoming messages requesting combat assistance in other zones, on other planets, and she ignores them for days.

When she actually finds the amulet’s intended recipient, she nearly spends an entire day trying to figure out what the hell she’s going to  _ say _ . In the end she doesn’t say much of anything - she delivers the amulet to an equally young man who crumples almost immediately into a heap in front of her like she’d just hit him in the stomach. She learns in that moment that people do actually  _ howl _ in grief, and it is not merely a turn of phrase. The moment feels awkward and wrong, and she wants to leave, but instead finds herself crouching down, placing a hand on his shoulder, and saying that at least she did not die alone, and that she died a warrior’s death. It seems to briefly snap him out of his grief, and he pulls himself together long enough to thank her for delivering the amulet, and for ensuring his love did not die alone and forgotten in the wastes. She rises and, because she still feels like she could have done more, gives her name and tells him to contact her again, should he require anything. Even as she speaks the words she knows that he will never contact her, and she would probably not respond quickly if he did. That is how grief works for some, she thinks.

She will not be able to explain, later, why she decided to return to the scene. She will  _ definitely _ be unable to explain why, upon arrival, she ignores her Ghost’s warning of movement in the building and goes in anyway. What she will not even make the slightest attempt to explain is why, when she encounters the Eliksni Dreg kneeling over the body of the fallen Vandal, the one that she’d moved days ago, she doesn’t shoot. The Dreg’s head snaps up at the sound of her entry, and the two regard one another for a long moment. Then, after it becomes clear that she has intruded on something private, and that she and the Dreg are both tired and weighed down by their respective sorrows (or more accurately, it is weighed down by its sorrow and she is weighed down by something she does not recognize that is probably sorrow), she turns and leaves. 

A week later, she will think she spots the Dreg in question among the bodies of a squad of scavengers she was tasked to hunt, and wonder if anything she’s done matters at all. 


	5. Needs Must

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Reef beckons - first out of necessity, then for adventure.

The first time she sees Petra Venj is the first time she realizes that she must have been human, once. She has no physical organs but she feels a phantom pulse quicken and understands then that her past self had a thing for short hair and possibly knives as well? Or maybe it’s the eyepatch.

It doesn’t really matter - she’s here on business (the solar system-saving kind of business, directed by a frustratingly unclear Exo), and the whole “being escorted under guard” thing is really not the place for introductions, is it? The Queen (part of her snorts derisively at the thought of declaring oneself Queen of a bunch of broken and floating debris, another part is entirely convinced that Mara Sov should be Queen of the whole damn system) stares her inscrutable stare and grants her the honor of going to kill a Gate Lord, and she leaves as quickly as possible. No time for introductions, no time to talk to some of the Eliksni, her Ghost chattering on about how weird this whole situation is and how small their chances of success are. She defies the odds, because she’s a fucking  _ Guardian _ , after all, and returns to the Queen. Petra is absent, this time, and she pretends that it does not matter. Then she dives into the Black Garden and does not think about the Reef for a long time.

When the House of Wolves rebels, and the Reef calls for aid - more importantly,  _ Petra Venj _ , Emissary of the Queen, requests aid - she is surprised and more than a little annoyed at the thrill of excitement that hits at the thought of working with her. If her Ghost notices her excitement, it does not give any outward sign beyond a small twitch of its top flanges.

Petra looks positively delighted when she arrives, which catches her off guard. “Well well well, the hero who took down the Black Garden. I am Petra Venj, the wrath of her Majesty the Queen Mara Sov.”

It is embarrassing, but it takes her a minute to remember how to speak. “Lathrys-2, of the Last City and member of the Vanguard. It is an honor to make your acquaintance.”

Petra raises an eyebrow, impressed. “Martial prowess  _ and  _ manners. I’m impressed.”

Lathrys-2 shrugs, falling quickly into her default manner of speaking. “You speak for the Queen. It seemed appropriate.”

This earned her a laugh, and Petra grinned. “Oh, Variks is going to  _ love _ you.”

“And what about you?” Lathrys-2 considers rebooting herself right then and there to spare herself the embarrassment, but decides to hope her tone is joking enough to get her out of trouble. 

Traveler help her, Petra just waggles her eyebrows suggestively and replies, “That depends on how grateful I’m feeling afterwards.”

She would continue her conversation, but Variks chooses that moment to make his entrance, and for a second Lathrys-2 thinks she sees the Dreg she’d spared back on Earth, but no - Variks has four arms, and regards her with an inscrutable stare. She falls back on formalities quickly, bowing slightly. 

“Lathrys-2, of the Last City and-”

“Vanguard, yesss.” Variks’ voice carries a sibilance that makes her think of snakes. “They send us a champion. I am Variks, of House Judgment. Here to help Petra deliver the Queen’s Justice.” He punctuates this sentence with a dry chuckle. 

After the first operation, Lathrys-2 decides she quite likes Variks and his dry reminders to kill her opponents before they kill her. Petra seems delighted to be running operations as well, after what Lathrys-2 gathers was a lengthy exile from the Reef - something she finds out about when Variks expresses surprise that the two never crossed paths during Petra’s exile. Petra’s flash of annoyance when discussing the subject ensures it is never brought up again, at least not within earshot.

A few missions later and Lathrys-2 finds herself spending more time with Variks than Petra - not for lack of trying, but the life of the Queen’s Wrath is apparently very busy, and Variks is a fascinating individual in his own right. That the two are both outcasts in their own way - the denizens of the Reef do not trust any sort of mechanical creation with a personality, and the Fallen are… the Fallen, so they aren’t exactly trusted either. It is strange to meet someone devoted to a cause in the way that Variks is devoted - quietly - to saving his entire species from ruin. That his plan seems to involve murdering a lot of his kin is, if nothing else, a sign of just how troubling the plight of the Fallen is. That Lathrys-2 finds herself considering it a  _ plight _ is a thought she tries not to focus on while putting large quantities of bullets into Fallen bodies. 

After Skolas is recaptured Lathrys-2, Petra, and Variks have a victory party that nearly causes the destruction of the Vestian Outpost and Petra admits she’s impressed with Lathrys-2’s skills, to which Lathrys-2 replies that she hasn’t even seen her best tricks yet. It is perhaps the  intoxicants talking, and perhaps not, but Petra drags her off somewhere private to find out what those tricks are.

Which is how Lathrys-2 remembers what had gotten her into an Exo body in the first place - a revelation that causes a whole other heap of feelings she doesn’t want or need. Petra is kind enough to put in a spirited effort at taking her mind off things. The next day she takes her leave of the Reef, with the assurance that she will return should duty (“or is that booty?” Lathrys-2’s Ghost says, causing her to threaten to make him float back to the Tower on his own) call. 

The next time she sees Petra the Queen is missing, presumed dead and everything’s gone to hell.


End file.
